FED:Conroy accused of NBN disarray

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has been accused of presiding over disarray after his department chief failed to submit answers to a Senate committee on time.

Peter Harris was supposed to have responded to the queries by Friday.

But instead the secretary of the department of broadband and communications told the Senate communications committee the questions could not be answered.

The 425 questions were submitted on February 22 this year.

"Given the complexity of the information required by many of the questions, we are unlikely to be able to provide answers to a significant number of questions by the due date," Mr Harris said in a letter to the committee.

Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull has blamed the minister for his department's failure to provide answers by the due date.

"As the NBN project unravels, this is another example of disarray and confusion that Senator Conroy has created," he told AAP on Friday.

The company building the $36 billion project is also being coy, following the resignation of a second senior manager within a matter of days.

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Nick Sotiriou has quit as NBN Co's manager of cost and resource estimates, but an NBN Co spokeswoman declined to confirm if Mr Sotiriou had relinquished the post, even though he confirmed it to The Australian newspaper.

"I'm not talking about individual staff issues. I'm not commenting," she said.

Mr Sotiriou's announcement to staff on Thursday came just two days after Patrick Flannigan resigned as NBN Co's head of construction.

The departure of two high-profile managers has put the spotlight on whether the government's plan to roll out optical fibres to 93 per cent of Australian homes can be delivered within budget.

In the only bit of good news for NBN Co, telco giants Telstra and Optus have agreed to take part in a trial at five "first release sites".

They are among 12 retail service providers who will connect customers to the broadband network.